About:Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German-American Bund by Arnie Bernstein is a non-ficiton book detailing the rise and fall of the American Nazi movement before World War II. This is another forgotten chapter in history, and even though we’d like to forget it, it seems wiser not to.

The author is giv­ing away one signed copy of this book –to enter fill out the Raf­fle­copt­ter form at the end of the post.

Thoughts:Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German-American Bund by Arnie Bernstein is a disturbing, scary but very readable history book. The book starts with a 1939 pro-Nazi rally held in Madison Square Garden bringing in tens of thousands of supporters – an even which today is difficult to fathom.

Mr. Bernstein focuses on one man, Fritz Julius Kuhn, a native German who moves to the US, gets a job for a known industrialist anti-Semite (Henry Ford) joins the German Bud and diligently gets to the top, to the position of Bundesführer. Eventually Kuhn is brought down by Fiorello La Guardia, Thomas Dewey, and others when they had had enough of his shenanigans.

The Bund finds many supporters of National Socialism (and the “Jewish Problem) but many high profile opponents as well. My favorite chapter had to do with the Jewish gangsters (Meyer Lansky, Longy Zwillman, Bugsy Siegel among others) who, while not religious and sometimes even a cause of shame for their communities, took it upon themselves to protect “their people” – and even enjoyed it as well.

The author does not hide his disdain from the subject of the book, a bunch of ugly people doing ugly things. The book is a fascinating chapter in American history showing how a fringe group can take the ideals this nation was founded on and manipulate them for their own purposes. Stupid people are dangerous in large groups and Mr. Bernstein proves it on every page.